


that out of Hell leads up to light

by Shinrinyoku



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Canon Backstory, Edom Angst (Shadowhunter Chronicles), Gen, M/M, Magnus Bane-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 09:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16172468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinrinyoku/pseuds/Shinrinyoku
Summary: When Magnus is a dying child on the streets of Indonesia, Asmodeus finds him and takes him in.It's a long time before he gets out again.





	that out of Hell leads up to light

**Author's Note:**

> Shadowhunters and its characters do not belong to me.

**_Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light_ **

  * **_John Milton, Paradise Lost_**



 

It’s evening in Menteng. Magnus is alone, curled like a dead thing in the shadow of a doorway. The heat is a physical weight bearing down on the city; it’s so hot, his skin almost sticks to the stone beneath him. He’s vaguely conscious of the patter of footsteps around him as people hurry to their homes. The thought has occurred to him earlier that he should really be sitting upright: they won’t stop to give him anything if they can’t see him. He finds now, though, that he’s too weak to manage even that.

It means that when the man with the crooked smile kneels down to look at him, the most he can do is roll his head on his neck and risk a glance upwards.

He doesn’t look too closely; people don’t like it when he looks at them.

‘Well,’ the man murmurs. His voice rolls over Magnus like smoke. ‘There isn’t much to you, is there?’

It takes Magnus a while, but through the fog of his thoughts, he realises the man is speaking _Jawa_ ; he’s become so used to hearing and begging in Dutch. The sound of his old tongue makes his heart lurch, in a way he’d thought it had forgotten how to do. 

He raises his head properly. The man’s hooked smile is still there, but there’s something thin and strange about it. It looks like the portraits Magnus sees sometimes, in the rich people’s houses: nearly real - but just slightly off. An artist’s guess at life; an approximation.

This man is very well-dressed, so maybe he is one of those people. Magnus thinks he might be able to beg something from him, at least. He pushes himself upright on his elbows, shaking with strain. When he speaks, he speaks _Jawa_ , swallowing the burn of tears in his throat.

‘Good evening, sir. Would you be kind enough to spare a few coins?’

Be polite, his mama always said. Be polite. _Good manners make mama proud_.

The man’s crooked smile twists and turns until it’s wide enough to show a row of blinding teeth. The sight of it makes something cold run in Magnus’s blood, but despite the chill, there’s something in his blood that responds to it, too. That _answers_ it, like it’s a language his very soul knows.

‘Oh,’ the man says. His eyes, above his pantomime smile, burn from brown into bright, blazing gold. The feeling in Magnus’s blood _spikes._ ‘I think I can do better than that _, bo-chah_. I think I can do better than that.’

His eyes are just like his own. Magnus doesn’t think about why that might be; in fact, he doesn’t think about it for a long time. It doesn’t matter to him, at that moment. All that matters is that when the man reaches out for his hand, Magnus, somehow, finds the strength to take it.

 

 

 

In time, the name Asmodeus becomes as familiar to him as breathing. Of course, he learns to use _father,_ too; but only to his father’s face. Otherwise, in his thoughts and in his heart, it’s _Asmodeus_. The distance the name creates is necessary; some part of him recognises that he’ll need it someday. That part of him is buried deep: in truth, he’s unaware of it at all, except on a subconscious level. All he knows, here and now, is that this place is his home. He belongs here, in a way he feels down to his bones and his blood and the tissue that binds him together.

His new home is like a furnace most of the time, but it’s a different kind of heat than the kind he grew up with. Some days Magnus walks for hours until he can’t take another step, and then he closes his eyes, lets the force of Asmodeus’s magic tug him back. When he opens his eyes, he’s in the Keep again, crumbling stone walls closing around him. The sand that creeps in through every crack is hot to the touch, but soon it doesn’t bother him; that heat becomes familiar to him too. He’s built from the same energy as this place, after all. It moulds and warps itself around him, but it can’t break him. In time he learns to command it, the same way its true Master does.

Asmodeus smiles at him every time he returns from his wanderings, which never take longer than a day: Edom is a vast realm, but it’s also an empty one. Red dunes of sand stretch out over the horizon, for miles and miles. Even if Magnus were inclined to explore, there’s nothing much to see. The emptiness doesn’t worry or frighten him; not yet.

‘This is your home, bo-chah,’ Asmodeus says one day. ‘It pleases me to see you how well you fit it.’

He reaches out and ruffles Magnus’s hair. Magnus is now thirteen mortal years old, but time moves differently on Edom; more years that he can keep track of have already slipped by. When ( _if)_ he returns to the mortal realm, he will have already lived lifetimes.

He smiles back at Asmodeus. He’s still young enough, in his heart, that when he looks at his father, he sees a man worth smiling at; sees a man he _wants_ to please. ‘There’s nowhere I’d rather be, father.’

They still speak in _Jawa_ , sometimes, but less and less as time goes by. Instead they speak the ancient tongue of Hell, all grinding vowels and heavy consonants. With each passing month, Magnus mourns the slow loss of that one remaining link with his mother.

 

 

Gradually, Magnus begins to see the truth. It’s the first stage in what he later remembers as the darkest point of his life, a life that sees its fair share of them.

He sees, at last, that Edom is a violent place, and that Asmodeus is a violent man. His father disappears for days at a time, often returning with a new human toy. Magnus is a far gentler creature; at his core, his instinct is to be kind. When Asmodeus starts hurting those people, starts peeling them or burning them or pulling them into little pieces, Magnus can’t bear to watch. He turns away and runs – finds a corner of the keep where their screams can’t follow.  

 _Why don’t you do something?_ he thinks, horrified and scared and so _angry_ at himself _._ _Why don’t you…_

And then he thinks that his father would kill him if he tried, and he learns the shame of selfishness. He wants to stay alive. Despite everything, he wants to stay alive.

And alive Magnus stays. The years drag on; if time on earth moves like water, time on Edom moves like mud, slowing to an almost sluggish crawl. His body stays tuned to the mortal realm, so physically he ages as he would there. By the time he’s spent 20 years in Edom, he looks fifteen; after 80 years, he looks 20.

The worst comes, so gradually that he’s not prepared for it when it does, and it is this: he sees so many horrors, so many dark and twisted things, that he stops seeing them as horrors at all. He watches his father bring mortal after mortal to the keep, and he doesn’t bother looking – he just moves to the next room and ignores the sound of their pain, as though the sound itself does not exist.

‘My good boy,’ Asmodeus says, when he finds him later. Magnus is playing with his magic, casting shadows on the walls to amuse himself. His father smiles. ‘If you keep out of trouble’s way, trouble won’t look for you.’

There’s a threat in there, but Magnus carefully doesn’t hear it; by now, 100 years have passed. Self-preservation has become second nature to him.

He thinks, a little desperately, that he must be going mad. He also thinks, more than a little desperately, that things are as bad as they can possibly get; there is no lower point they could reach.

This is Edom at her cruellest: even that faint comfort is swallowed up by her shifting sands.

He takes to following Asmodeus when he leaves the keep. He walks beside him, deeply aware of a new feeling he’s begun to experience: how safe he feels, how _alive,_ when he goes anywhere with his father. The Edomai they pass scuttle back when they see Asmodeus, but they’re also beginning to cower at the sight of _Magnus._ Asmodeus hums when he notices, amused.

‘Well, now…what _have_ you been doing to your poor siblings, hmm?’

Magnus has been practicing his magic on them, in the way he’s seen Asmodeus do. He doesn’t think about them much beyond that.

‘They’re not as clever as you, you know. They need to be guided, to be _taught_. They need a firm hand. Don’t let their fear of you blind them to their duty.’

‘Their duty, father?’

‘Why,’ Asmodeus says, beckoning one creature forward. It crawls before them, clicking, metal eyes like a beetle’s. ‘Their duty to serve you.’

He clenches his hand, then flicks it open. The Edomai explodes in a burst of black flesh.

When Asmodeus turns his smile to him, Magnus knows what to do. He beckons one to him, and he curls his fingers.

As familiar as breathing – that’s all it is.

That’s all it is for four hundred years.

 

 

 

 

Magnus earns a reputation among the other denizens of Hell. Word travels from realm to realm, far beyond the red dunes of Edom. His uncles – the other fallen angels, angry and bitter creatures with too much time and too much power between them – regard him with a sort of amusement. Asmodeus says they’re fond of him, in their own way, and Magnus thinks he’s right: he usually is.

The longer he spends in the realm of his father, the stronger his magic grows. He practices relentlessly – on Edomai, on whatever minor demon crosses his path. He even practices on himself, sometimes. The one thing he can never bring himself to do is practice on the humans. A part of him realises how little that’s worth – he does nothing when Asmodeus brings them in, does nothing to ease their suffering – but it’s all he can give them. When he looks at them, he still sees his mother’s face.  

Azazel visits Edom every decade or so. Out of all Magnus’s uncles, he’s the one he sees most often. He’s as sharp as a blade and as quick as one; he’s the great Forger of Weapons, after all. Magnus trains with him sometimes, but it always ends in blood, and always _his_ blood.

‘Well,’ he once hears Azazel say to Asmodeus, ‘there’s an excellent little lieutenant you’ve created.’

‘You would think so,’ Asmodeus says. Magnus can hear the smile in his voice (that smile that has never truly changed, not even all these years after that one on the streets of Batavia). ‘But I’m afraid there’s still a little too much mortal in him yet. A few more centuries; that will drain it from him. If it all comes to nothing…well, there’s always a use for warlocks.’

Azazel laughs. ‘The furnaces of Edom burn ever fiercer, brother. If you insist on adding to them again, I shall have to get a warlock of my own.’

‘By all means. I’ve met your children before, remember. I think you’ll find it a harder task than I to find one with a fire like this one.’

‘Hm,’ Azazel murmurs. His voice is lowered with something like curiosity. ‘He’s a clever thing. If he’s survived this long…you might have chosen well this time, I think. We shall see what you can make of him.’

Magnus leaves before he hears the end of their conversation. He’s heard enough.

His days are filled with sulphur and magic; with hot sand and red skies. He’s grown into a tall, handsome young man: he could still pass as 21, in the mortal realm. He wonders idly how things have changed there – he knows fewer years have passed there than have in Edom, but does not know how few. It’s something he’s beginning to suspect he’ll never have the chance to know.

Hardness has long since begun to chip away at the core of goodness in him. The process is a slow one, but it’s a process all the same. Each day, he goes to his bed a little less the boy he used to be. He flexes his fingers and sends Edomai skittering away, tumbling over themselves to get out of his path. At the same time, his father’s advice rings constantly in his ears: _don’t let their fear blind them to their duty._ A firm hand: that’s all they need. They come when he calls. He, too, is their Master now.

The work of Hell goes on. He stands in the middle of it, caught in its rhythm. It’s a part of him now; he thinks it always will be.

 

Except the end comes, despite everything. He thinks that maybe there is a God after all.

 

 

It comes like this:

He turns a corner of the Keep. It’s twilight in Edom: nothing stirs on the sand, no wind blows, no night creatures croon in the dark. It’s a day like any other, except it’s not: there’s a mortal tied outside his room.

He stops walking; the girl looks at him. Her shift is wet with her own blood, from her shoulders to her knees.

‘Help me,’ she says.

And he does.

Later, he struggles to pinpoint when it began to change for him. Why, suddenly, could he do something he’d never been able to do before? The mortal had been left for him to play with; was that it? Was it that, faced with a choice he couldn’t make, the kind, human side of him sprang to life after so long and said _no more_?

He doesn’t know. In fact, he never knows; it just happens, and he’s grateful enough for the rest of the long years of his life that he doesn’t question it further.

What happens is: he releases the girl. Shepherds her to the only portal connected with the world above, and uses the force of his own magic to push her through. She disappears without a trace, and Magnus stands watching the space she leaves behind for several long minutes. Somewhere deep inside him, the boy in Menteng stands up on his own two feet.

 _Well,_ he thinks, _if I don’t get out now, I never will._

He returns to the Keep and to his bed.

 

 

 

The next morning, with the sun burning red above him, Magnus finds Asmodeus, and tell him that he’s leaving.

His father laughs, once. Angry – but also something else. Magnus thinks, disbelievingly, that it might be _hurt._

‘I assumed by this point that you had gathered the rules, my dear boy. There is no leaving here. Not for anyone; certainly not for you.’

Magnus smiles. ‘I think that used to be right. Would have been, maybe. And perhaps I’ll end up back here someday, no matter how much I fight it. But you forget, father: I may be like you in many ways, but there’s a part of me you’ve never been able to touch.’

He’s has an inkling of what he needs to do, and when he reaches for the mortal side of him, the human side, he has to bury deep to find it, but it’s there. After all this time – it’s there.

The formal words of the banishment spell flow easily from his mouth; he’s heard Asmodeus use it before, on Lilith. It’s easier than he ever imagined it would be.

He’s added his own modifications: when he turns to walk away, taking the path he took earlier with the stumbling human girl, he hears Asmodeus’s rage following him. His father is rooted to the spot where he left him, trapped within the walls of the Keep. That part of the spell will wear off eventually, and he’ll be able to roam freely again, but only on Edom; the mortal world will be lost to him, for as long as Magnus can help it.

In the end, it’s as easy as breathing: Magnus steps through the portal, and staggers out into the light of the sun. The mortal realm careens around him, perpetually in giddy motion. It’s morning in Menteng; Edom is a world away.

 

 

 

 

‘You’re the furthest thing from a Greater Demon’, Alec says. His hand is a warm weight on the side of his neck.

Magnus shuts his eyes tight, and kisses him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
